


There are things I want to say

by Fusterya



Category: 00Q - Fandom, James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, James Bond-Q, Skyfall - Fandom
Genre: Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Secret love, Why must I depress myself this way?, a little bit angsty, injuried James, subtle happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:33:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fusterya/pseuds/Fusterya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James is broken and out of MI6.<br/>His former Quartermaster has something to confess.<br/>Maybe there's a hope, after all....</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are things I want to say

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank my 00Q girlfriend Amy for the translation.  
> English is not my first language, I owe her everything.  
> Thank you so much, sweetie. 
> 
> _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*** 

 

The air is piercing; it’s early morning.

Bond looks at the immense meadow of the park stretching before his eyes: the wooden planks of the bench are like ice against his back, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

He has nothing to say.  
He doesn’t even know why he’s here.

To his right, the Quartermaster is rubbing his hands nervously, pretending to warm them up.

His is frowning... he has the same intense and suffering expression that Bond had seen when he’d peeked around the door in the hospital, not knowing that James wasn’t sleeping and was, instead, studying the thin figure through a veil of blonde eyeslashes, concentrating on him, on the dark green parka, on the dark hair dampened by rain, to better fight the physical pain.

But Q hadn’t come into the room.  
He’d stayed there, for minutes and minutes, staring at him from the doorway.

As if he didn’t have the right.

"Come in" – he’d have said – "You’re the only one who’s come here, after Alec and Eve.... and we’ve never spoken in a year, apart from through earpieces".

But his voice was trapped by a breathing tube, and would be for days.  
Days in which the Quartermaster would invariably watch from the doorway to his room in the hospital. Every day.

“What are you going to do, then?” Q says after a while, and Bond pulls himself back from the memory.

He fixes his gaze on two joggers passing in front of them, moving to a good rhythm.

“I’m going to open a cigar shop.”

Q puffs out an unhappy smile. Bond’s now watching his elegant profile, a profile like dandies of other times, haughty and mean in his own way, and he can’t smile with him.

He doubts that he could serve clients with a paralyzed hand.

“What did you want to tell me, Q?”  
The Quartermaster tightens his eyes and looks into the distance.  
“That if you need anything...”  
He’s interrupted by Bond’s soft dark laughter.  
“For the love of God, Q. Shit.”

Q just turns his head towards Bond, and looks at the large bulge protruding from the dark coat that would fit him to perfection, if it weren’t for the stiff bandage holding his left arm motionless against his torso.

It’s a miracle they didn’t amputate it. 

“...that I’m sorry.” Q presses.

Bond fumbles with his right hand and pulls out a packet of Marlboro’s, holding it between his fingers and pulling a cigarette out with his teeth.

The dry sound of the flint against the steel wheel of the lighter almost rumbles in the damp silence of the morning.

The bright spark makes Bond’s eyes tighten. “It wasn’t your fault.”

No, it hadn’t been his fault. Q hadn’t been there when it happened: he’d gone home for a couple of hours, at least to take a shower after days of support on that - yes - sensitive mission, but so similar to many others.

When the full metal jacket- hollow point bullet shot from sniper’s rifle had hit Bond, after an unexpected ambush, Q was lying asleep on the couch, with his hair still dripping wet.

When they’d told him that 007 was dying of blood-loss, this time well and truly, and that his arm was almost severed in half at the top of his upper arm, Q had looked into the bathroom mirror for long minutes, overwhelmed by the need to vomit.

“It seemed right...” Q starts with some difficulty. Bond turns to watch him, blowing out the smoke. Q takes a deep breath and tries again.

“...it seemed right to tell you something, now that probably we will never see each other again.” 

Something very likely, now that Bond is no longer part of MI6.

Badge withdrawn, licence revoked. They’d left him his firearm so as to not exaggerate the humiliation.

Bond stares at him expectantly, his face hollowed from months in the hospital and physical pain. Only the transparent blue of his eyes is still the same: Q thinks that that colour and that brilliance won’t ease up even when he truly dies. He’ll probably remain dry somewhere with turquoise eyes open wide to the sky, and whoever comes to his aid will look into those eyes and will think that he’s still alive, that they can get him out.

“I miss working with you.”  
Q throws out, focussing his stare on that blue. Which remains silent.  
“I miss you, Bond.”  
James’ eyes stay cold, two moons of water in another solar system.

He takes another mouthful, blows the smoke out from his nose.  
The handsome face, all angles and wrinkles, shows no shadow, no light, no movement. Nothing.at.all.

“So, this is the part where you pity me?”

Q opens his mouth to say something, suddenly without oxygen and speechless, but James pulls another mouthful of the cigarette.

“Excuse me.” he says, standing up, in an absurd and unintentional parody of their first meeting in the National Gallery.

This time it isn’t a sentence to hold him, but the feeling of Q’s fingers wrapped around the hem of his dark coat. A tug, without too much force, followed by a strong grip and no hesitation.

“James... please.”

Bond stays standing, keeping his back to Q.

In the distance a group of kids chase a basketball.  
Their muffled shouts make Bond’s eyes close in the attempt to recall a time when genuine joy existed for him too.  
That born of a ball, a blade of grass, the aroma of a fruit.

Then he opens them, and it’s today again.  
“I wanted to tell you a lot of things...” Q’s voice continues behind him.  
“I wanted to be near you... to be with you. Since before. Since forever. I never knew how to reach you.”

Like velvet, subtle, that voice, and without the annoying overconfidence that once dripped from the earpiece.

“I didn’t know how to do it.”  
Then he’s silent.  
Bond breathes two more puffs of the cigarette.

It’s strange how this sudden silence and the weight of Q’s fingers still gripping the hem of his coat, gently give rise to the revelation in his exhausted mind, flat like a plank of wood with too many nails driven into it haphazardly.

It’s a slow illumination, undramatic, that slips up behind James’ eyes and makes him let out a slight sigh and toss the cigarette in front of him with a small movement.

Q lets go of his coat.  
Slowly, he sits back down and turns to look at him expressionlessly.

Q keeps his head low and stares at the ground with tight lips and with his hands now fiddling nervously on his lap.

He looks like a little boy forgotten somewhere by his parents: but he isn’t, and James knows this better than anyone else.

“God...” he mutters, “I’m pathetic. And this is the part where I should be pitied by you.”

James turns with three-quarters off fatigue, clumsy with the balance of the bandage, and studies him with an unnatural calm.

“Look at me.”  
Q stays still. His teeth sink even deeper into his already tormented lower lip. “Look at me, Q.”

Q lifts his head, slowly, and turns toward him, pale and graceful, eyes shining with tiredness and shame. And love.

“On the matter of feeling sorry for each other, we’re sorted then.” says James, and when he hints at a smile, the lifeless blue of his eyes is stripped of its hardness and filled with a new shade of something.

Q manages to smile with him, and the small tear that escapes from his left eye, getting stuck in the nose of his glasses, does so in a way that cuts James Bond right in two, on that bench in the middle of the park on a Wednesday in January.

“Come home with me.” James says, without reaching out to touch him like he’d like to.

Not for gratitude, not for solace, but because he’s always wanted to. And not even he knew how.  
Q keeps silent, dumbfounded.  
“It’s cold” James presses, standing up again “It’s not good for me.” 

“I... took the tube...”

James, however, holds out his good hand and waits for Q to take it. 

“Even better. We’ll walk together.”

Q’s fingers are warm: he would’ve expected the exact opposite, considering how long and white they are, and for how cold it is.  
But they’re so hot, cozy, and he clings to them with all the hunger for life, and the desperation, the hate, the pain, the loneliness and the disappointment of an entire existence, even if in this moment it’s Q who is being hoisted to his feet thanks to his grip.

Q is in front of him and continues to stare at him in disbelief.  
James doesn’t kiss him.

He will do it... oh, of course, he’ll do it before too long, as soon as they’re beyond the warmth of the front door of his house, with the promise of tea in the air and with something desired happening, unexpectedly, finally... but not now.

Now he can only look at him, and beyond the gilded green of Q’s irises, he can almost imagine how it’ll feel to let him putting all the pieces back together, one by one. Slowly.

He can almost see Q reach out and grab him before the edge of the precipice, like he always did without knowing it.

“Let’s go.” he simply says.

Q isn’t ready, he’s still trying to understand, but he says the first of his yes’s with a slight nod of his head. 

 

James wraps his good arm around his waist – with a firm grasp of his – and they set out slowly, without talking, leaving behind the silence of death, of all of their deaths, broken by the echo of the kids.


End file.
